Bealtaine Festival 2017 - All Together Now: Celebrating the power of the collective!

We are now inviting you to register to take part in this year’s Bealtaine Festival.  As you are aware, Bealtaine is Ireland’s national celebration of creativity as we age.

For the past 21 years the Festival has grown into Ireland’s largest co-operative arts festival with over 3,500 events taking place each year in towns and villages throughout the country. As the world’s first national celebration of creativity in older age, the Festival has also inspired a number of international festivals working to promote deep engagement with the arts by people of 50 and over.

Register Your Event

Because we have grown so much over the past number of years, we ask organisers to register their events online using this link:

http://www.bealtaine.com/eventregistration

This link will ensure you become part of the Festival and will remain live up until May 2017.

For guaranteed inclusion on the Festival website, however, we encourage you to register your event before 31st March 2017.

In addition, for guaranteed inclusion within a listing of organisers on the festival brochure, please register by Friday 24^th February 2017.

If you have any queries regarding the online registration process or the festival, please contact Age & Opportunity Arts and Culture Administrator Kim Chew:  kim.chew@ageandopportunity.ie.

Planning Your Event

Take a look at last year’s Bealtaine programme on the Bealtaine website for some inspiration or contact the Bealtaine team who would be delighted to talk about ideas or potential partners you could work with in your local area. In addition, we will have a new website soon (as detailed below) which will offer you event supports and tips.

The Festival Web-Site www.bealtaine.com

The Bealtaine Festival web site is currently undergoing development and will be ready within a few weeks (we will alert you to this by email). When the new website goes live, your event will then be made available for viewing online on the new website.

2017 Theme

This year the Bealtaine Festival theme is Altogether Now! Celebrating Collectivism, civic engagement, protest and empathy! This theme specifically recognises the contribution of older people in Ireland to the concept of ‘people power’, the collective, civic engagement (and yes protest!), as well as empathy (the sentiment that generally generates these movements). You can choose to incorporate the theme in to your event or not, whichever you prefer.

The Festival Team at Age & Opportunity appreciate all the time and work put in by artists, arts centres, libraries, theatres, galleries, arts officers, national cultural institutions, orchestras, community groups, and creative people of every age in coming together each May to celebrate work developed throughout the year and to underline the importance of creativity throughout our lives. It is this unique collaboration that makes the festival special year on year.

Good luck with your planning and here’s to a great Bealtaine 2017!

Bealtaine Festival Team

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